2017 is a year when China’s mobile Internet industry won the global leader. Mobile app has been fully integrated into people’s daily work, living and studying, more and more industrial apps have effectively promoted the development of “Internet + Advanced Manufacturing Industry”. The future of the industry lies in software. The core feature of Internet + is mobile Internet, which is driven by the innovations of the developers.

In order to continuously promoting the values of openness, innovation, competition, health, safety and honesty of developers, promote the healthy development of society, culture and economy, the “50 Best Apps of 2017” in 20 categories of China will come out after the checking of AppBase data and five factors of user experience as a whole.

Through the coverage of more than 3 million mobile applications of 14 dimensions of market, operation, product and R&D data, with 2017’s whole year tracking test, data screening and due diligence, the list of “The 50 Best Apps of 2017 of China”will generate a total of 1,000 leading apps in 20 categories of the 5 major future trends of Consume Escalation, New Demographic Dividend, Commercial Merge, Fintech and Industrial application.

AppBase is the comprehensive strength of mobile APP

The AppBase Synergy Quadrant helps analyze the 14 dimensions of the two key attributes of mobile app marketplace operations and product development, providing people with a simplified app marketplace, operations, products, and research and development enhancements (App Synergy Factors Decision Tools), so as to accurately find the most puzzling problems of the development of strategic issues for the app developers. Based on objective assessment of an app relative to its vertical field of the same type’s app’s overall strength, so as to set a development strategy of product development and market balanced operation, and use it to judge the overall impact on the input-output, the static comparison and dynamic trend of invest – return and finally establish a long-term and sustained strength. At the same time, provide a basis of judging the potential for the app’s synergy for investors and people in the industry.

App developers, especially with the support of capital, often do not hesitate to work hard on online promotion, advertising, pushing, activities, and even bad things like brushing lists. However, the acquired users must effectively convert and retain after they experience the product. Once the product has a problem or negative evaluation, they did not actively improve the product, enhance the experience. Rather, they find ways to delete posts, delete bad comments, ‘addressing the symptoms, not the cause’. If the product development did not get sufficient attention, even if more money is spent or more of the “water army” (paid posters) is hired, still they cannot control the users. As long as your app is not the market’s only (monopoly) service or resource, there must be other apps with similar features, services. The users will not hesitate to go to them when they appear.

The app is essentially governed by two independent but mutually interacting variables – “products” and “markets.” As shown in the picture, the effect resulting from the input of mobile application products and development expertise is taken as the x-axis. The effects resulting from inputs of markets, operations are taken as the y-axis. They form a two-dimensional quadrant. With axes of 5 respectively scale divisions, with 60% of the 3 points as centerline, is divided into unbalanced 4 quadrants. X-axis and y-axis scale with the size of number, and summarizing the comprehensive strength effect between various apps at the same time and conditions.

Synergy: App with a relative advantage of 60% in both market operations and product development is attributed to Synergy, such as App? in the picture above. Leaders should maintain their competitive edge while paying close attention to rivals (such as App ? in the picture above) who also are in the leader’s quadrant. And ready for challenges at all times. On the other hand, once the market drivers and product drivers work on deficiencies, it will also create a competitive threat to the leader quadrant app.

Market Driver: An app whose market performance is 60% and product development is less than 60% is categorized as Market Driver, such as App? in the picture above. Market drivers already have the operational advantages of market quadrant leader. But the key of whether it can sustain depends on the improvement efficiency of product development.

Product Strengthener: App with less than 60% market performance and 60% product development advantage is attributed to Product Strengthener, such as App? in the picture above. Product Strengtheners are relatively more focused on products and development and user experience. As long as the funds and resources can coordinate, after increasing investment in market operation, they will have the opportunity to enter the leader quadrant.

Entrant: App with less than 60% market operation and product development is categorized as Entrants, such as App? in the figure below. Entrants do not have the advantage in both market operations and product development. But if forming vertical differentiation in the subdivision field, achieving breakthrough on single point, there will be great opportunity for subverting the existing market structure. And this is what people in venture capital and VC is more concern about.

AppBase growth rate

QGR @ mrq (Qtrly Growth Rate of Most Recent Quarter) is used to describe the relative growth rate (%) of app in the most recent quarter (3 months).

YGR @ ttm (Yearly Growth Rate of Trailing Twelve Months) is used to describe the relative growth rate (%) of app over the past 12 months.

Adjust your growth strategy with AppBase Synergy Factors

The 14 latitude data of Testin AppBase is obtained through Testin platform’s data accumulation and open channel. The work done by App Developers at all latitudes will have an impact on the market performance and the external performance of product development, which will affect AppBase’s data. Testin Lab calculates the average conditions of all application data in the AppBase library, and obtains the relative AppBase values of each app.

Testin AppBase app samples were taken from Android, iOS version in the open market. Becoming Testin’s enterprise customers directly and get related services can not directly change the AppBase indicators. But with the help of Testin’s developer services, developers are able to spot problems, improve quality, and iterate over updates. These could affect AppBase’s various factors particularly technical specifications related to product development.

Marketing & Operation

The market operation dimension mainly reflects the market effect in two ways. One is by three user factor data – downloading, installing and activating, they also reflect user operation effects. The other is the social network, media reflects the market effect, especially mobile media. Among them, the coverage effect of iOS version is found in the mainstream of AppStore and the country’s major third-party stores, channels; Android version is found in the mainstream of more than 50 stores and download channels. The global effect of the version synchronous release on AppStore, GooglePlay, Amazon Store and other third-party is also concluded.

Social Influence, the factors influencing social network mainly include the following: a) WeChat index, the number of fans in the WeChat Official Account, the total number of article readings in the last month, article likes, and WeChat search in Article which can hit the “app”; b) Weibo index, the number of fans in the Official Account, the number of interaction in microblogging Official Account in recent months, including the number of forwarding, commenting, likes, Weibo search which can hit App name; c) Baidu Tieba/Baidu Zhidao/Baidu Encyclopedia index, App name Tieba fans, the number of posts, the number of Zhidao articles, entry reading of encyclopedia d)Zhihu, Douban index, data of data.

The product development dimension reflects the overall strength of app developer’s product development in several ways. They are the realization of the app function; the user experience; the app compatibility and comprehensive performance on the Top terminal; the actual performance and stability after the release of the app tested by the users; evaluations on the download shop and mobile social media by the users; whether it regular iterates update and release of new versions; the continuity of the app development.

2) Iterations, which reflects the relative coefficient of the app periodically modifying, updating and upgrading the iteration, objectively reflects the execution ability of the R & D team and the completion of the management system.

User Experience (UX) is a subjective experience created by a user using a product. The ISO 9241-210 standard defines the user experience as “people’s perceptions and responses to products, systems or services that are used or expected to be used.” For mobile applications, the user experience can be measured by the function of the app, startup response time, FPS, objective indicators such as CPU, memory and GPU occupancy. The app with a user experience coefficient greater than 60 is deemed as a user experience benchmark app.

Startup time: When people interact with each other, both parties will respond. They will do it either through speech, body movements or eyes. The same is true in the digital world. Software must express its current state in some form. The response time of a product is directly related to the user’s level of control, and it forms an interactive communication with the user. Jakob Nielsens APP Standard: 0.1 Seconds – Application UI Interface Responsive to User Actions, Users Will Have Direct Control Feelings; 1 Second – Users’ Ideas Will Not Be Interrupted, There Will Be No Waiting Feelings; 10 Seconds – to reach such a waiting time, the user will not play again. In reality, users will also do “rampant comparison”. If an app took 3 seconds to open, and the other app with same function only took 0.3 seconds, people will not hesitate to turn to a faster app. The most important thing is to compare the response speed with a competing app.

FPS: Frame Percent Seconds refers to the number of frames views updated per second, which is the UI fluency index. The more the app running frames per second are, the more fluid the UI will show, people will feel the app running faster and smoother. Conversely, if the app’s runtime frame rate is less than 16, you will feel a clear sense of lapping.

Testin has continuously focused on the innovation and development of China mobile internet research and test since establishment, and now is honor to watch the birth to the 1,000 Best Apps of 2017 of China with the users, developers, professionals, investment institutions and industry entities. Testin will also witness Chinese app developers’ attitudes to the global mobile Internet development, from learning and participating to leading.

About Testin

Testin is the global leader in One-Stop-Application cloud testing services for applications such as web, mobile web, Html5, native and lite APP, mobile game, VR/AR, AI, smart wearable, smart home, smart driving, IoT and industrial APP developers to provide the necessary testing services and quality assurance. Testin is the disruptor of the traditional software testing service mode, combine AI automated real device SaaS testing, crowdsourcing testing, full stack security testing and continuous big data analysis, succeeded not only in capturing the domestic market of China but also in sett its foot of the global arena, has now continued to serve more than 800,000 developers with their 2.3+ million APPs, branding clients including most tier 1 internet entities like McDonald’s, Nestle, Starbucks, Daimler, BMW, Philips and Kabam, etc. Testin has been certified by ISO9000, ISO27001, ISO20000, ISO17025, CMMI3 and CNAS, aim to help developers build confidence in their applications and ensure a good user experience. Testin has secured US$84.9 million in 3 rounds of IDG, Banyan, Haiyin, and CEL. Testin has been recognized as 2015 and 2016 Deloitte High-Tech & Growth Top 50 China, Red Herring Finalist 2014 Asia 100, 2015 Global 100 and 2017 Red Herring Global 100 Winner.